Juuling, vaping, smoking, patches. All of these products have one thing in common: nicotine, a highly addictive drug designed to hook its victims into a life of superficial fun and servitude.
Juuls in particular have been ravaging the Pleasant Valley community lately, causing dissent between students and their teachers, parents, and even friends. But they are supposedly not that bad, right? After all, they were designed like the other e-cigarettes to help stop smoking, weren’t they? Not really.
The company JUUL was established in 2015 and has since plagued our school. With this in mind, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has kept its steely gaze on vaping and Juuls in particular since their inception into schools around the world.
Brian King, a member of the CDC studying the effects of Juuling, talked about the differences between cigarettes and vapes. “We know that cigarette smoke contains 7,000 chemicals and 70 carcinogens, so e-cigarettes are safer than cigarettes, but that doesn’t mean they’re safe,” King stated. Even though vapes are not as bad as cigarettes, their long-term effects are a complete mystery.
What is not unheard of is the success JUUL labs have had in the market. Since it began in 2015, the company has come to control around 30 percent of the e-cigarette market in late 2017, and has been estimated to control 50-75 percent of the market by the end of 2018.
In light of this discovery in schools across the United States, the Food and Drug Administration decided some months ago that they would investigate the nature of vapes as well as Juuls.
Commissioner Scott Gottlieb of the FDA wrote in a press announcement on April 24, 2018 about the steps the department is taking to eliminate all traces of e-cigarettes from teens’ lives, whether it comes in the form of advertising, toxicity, or use. “We’re also exploring clear and meaningful measures to make tobacco products less toxic, appealing and addictive with an intense focus on youth.”, Gottlieb stated. “Ultimately, our work on tobacco and nicotine regulation is aimed at achieving the greatest public health benefit.”
Even with all of the crackdowns on JUUL and its fellow vape-makers’ social media advertising campaigns, the damage has already been done. In a New York Times article two boys talk about the appeal of vapes and Juuls. “You go to the bathroom, there’s a zero percent chance that anyone’s smoking a cigarette and there’s a 50-50 chance that there’s five guys Juuling. And it’s like, how Band-Aid has become synonymous with ‘bandage’? Juul has become synonymous with ‘vape’”, stated Sebastian (last name redacted for disciplinary reasons).
All of these things come to fruition too late, as just in the past two weeks alone a person was caught smoking marijuana and two others were caught Juuling in bathrooms throughout the school. Junior Peyton Weisbeck reminisced about the Juuling epidemic at PV. “I think it [JUULing] is escalating. I get that it’s a moral thing and everyone can make that choice, but I don’t think people are educated enough to make the best decision.”
Weisbeck went on to talk about how the education that students do receive, such as “the real cost” ads by the FDA, are scare tactics and not informative evaluations of the effects of vaping.
Even though there are only a few vapers at PV, rumors were spread that a list of around 50 students was recorded for Juuling and that every student was being watched to see their behaviors. Kiran Marla, a junior that was a part of the original group that spread the rumor, put it to rest. “Yeah we said it as a joke and it got passed around,” Marla stated. “Even if it did exist I’d be glad because I think schools should be taking initiative to help stop vaping. Students already know the consequences of getting caught and should be willing to take the punishment for it.”
Even a joke can go a long ways to show how intent people are on something. When that joke is about the health of kids and Juuling, it truly shows how little our community knows about the hazardous effects of vaping.
It wasn’t so long ago when everyday in the news you would hear about a vape exploding in someone’s mouth or pocket. The only difference now is that the effects of vaping are where we can’t see them with the naked eye.
